


Endorphins

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, TW: Suicide, tw: depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Roxy slips up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endorphins

**Author's Note:**

> More detailed warnings, because I didn't want to write super long tags: depression, thoughts of suicide (no character death), subsequent jokes about suicide, and implied alcoholism. I think that's it.

You slipped again.

You shouldn’t have brought the bottle with you. It was a stupid mistake. If you hadn’t brought it, maybe you wouldn’t have started drinking from it.

Maybe you would have taken the first shower when the feeling came, or cried yourself to sleep early or something. You might not have given in and drank.

At the time you thought you’d feel better. You feel worse. You know you’ve let everyone down, especially Dirk. He has more faith in you than anyone, and you love him more than anyone, and you’ve let him down.

While he was in the shower, you grabbed one of his hoodies and headed to the rooftop. Knowing him, he’s probably still in the shower. That’s good. You don’t want him to see you like this, close to tears, sitting on the ledge, feet dangling over the edge.

It’s strange. You could jump right now. You’re just inches away from falling to your death. You haven’t felt more alive in a long time. The city lights aren’t any prettier and the wind isn’t any softer, but your vision is sharper and you actually feel your hair tickling as it moves in the wind. You bundle up more tightly in Dirk’s hoodie and the smell of his cologne isn’t quite as faint.

You open up the bottle again, maybe to drink until you black out. You actually look at what you have left, trying to gauge how drunk you’d get if you chugged it all now. There’s enough to make you pass out for sure, but enough to kill you? Probably not. Worthless, then. You pour it out onto the ground below instead. It takes a long time to actually reach the bottom.

You drop the empty bottle too and time its fall. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one…the glass shatters once it hits the pavement. You wonder if your bones would too.

You think about it as you stare at the glass shards sparkling in the streetlights. You’re a lot heavier than that bottle was. Do you think it would take you two and a half seconds to hit the floor? Yes, it would, you dumbass, you’re forgetting your basic physics.

The real question is would the fall kill you.

Will you do it? Could you do it? You feel shitty enough to die. You kind of want to die. But could you actually push yourself off this ledge right now and do it?

You hear the door open behind you and realize you’ve missed your window of opportunity. There’s only one person it could be, but for a couple of foolish seconds you hope that it’s anyone but Dirk.

You don’t hear him move again until he’s right next to you. He rests his hands on the ledge and leans forward. His head only reaches your shoulder. His hair is still wet. He didn’t even bother to put his glasses on before he came up. You’re facing the ground, but he’s facing the sky. Really though, you’re looking at each other out of the corners of your eyes.

You can’t bring yourself to say anything to him. There’s nothing to say, really. You feel like a child. Stupid. Foolish. You’ve disappointed him again. You sit in silence for a long time.

Unsurprisingly, he’s the first one to speak. “Are you alright?”

_No._ “Yeah, just thinking.”

“About what?”

_Killing myself._ “Not a lot. Nothing important.”

He frowns, and you realize there’s no hope of fooling him. He can read you too easily. You don’t want to offer him any more information; he’ll just worry. You’re not worth that trouble. You break eye contact, and that’s your big mistake.

“Roxy, come down,” he says, his voice soft. He only ever says three other words in that tone. Dirk places his hand on top of yours, but you don’t look at him. You can’t, or else you’ll cry. Maybe it would be good to let it all out, but crying in front of him feels a lot like pulling him down to your level.

There’s no way you can jump now. He’s put himself in a position where if you try to push yourself off, he can catch you and pull you back up. If he wanted to, he could pick you up right now and carry you back inside. Resigned, you swing your legs back over to the other side. Your feet hit the roof next to Dirk’s. You look at his sandals instead of his eyes.

He pulls you into a hug. You simply let him. You rest your head on his shoulder and drape your arms loosely around his waist as he holds you tightly. You almost wish he wouldn’t. You don’t deserve this.

Neither of you say anything for a long time. You don’t move, despite how much you just want to go sleep. You realize that you’ve lost the feeling of having your senses heightened. The noise of the city has faded to static in the background again. Even with your nose pressed to Dirk’s skin, his scent is barely as strong as it was in his hoodie. But he’s warm, and everything else is cold.

“Was that your bottle on the ground?” he asks. His voice is gentle, but it feels harsh. You finally tear up as you nod. You didn’t realize he’d seen it. He must think so lowly of you now.

He doesn’t lecture you, as you expect him to. That just makes you feel worse. You didn’t think that was possible. You just wish you wouldn’t have started crying. You squeeze your eyes shut, get it under control before it really starts.

Eventually he lets you go and you finally look at his face again. He still looks worried, even though the immediate danger has gone. Your eyes start watering again. You make the mistake of blinking, and tears start falling. Before you can really get started crying, you wipe your eyes dry with the sleeve of Dirk’s hoodie. You think of how pathetic you must look. For some reason it makes you laugh.

Dirk looks like he wants to pull you into a hug again. Instead, he holds out his hand. You take it, and he leads you back inside. He just drops it once you’re in his room again. You sit on his bed as he pulls open a drawer and begins to search through it.

“You know what makes you happy?” he asks, pulling things out and setting them aside.

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.” It’s almost surprising how quickly you start joking again once the scenery is changed. It’s too easy. You suppose that’s always how you coped, besides alcoholism.

You can almost hear Dirk roll his eyes. “Endorphins.” You laugh at his tone more than his answer. “You know what gives you endorphins?”

You immediately think sex, but you have to keep with the joke you started. “Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.”

“Exercise, Roxy.” He finally finds what he was looking for; an unlabeled CD. You’re about to ask why the hell he has a CD (honestly, is he forty?) before you realize what his plan is.

“Exercise? Awesome, now I’m actually going to kill myself.” You flop back on his bed dramatically. But Dirk goes silent and tense, and you wonder if you’ve crossed a line.

The awkward moment passes when he turns the stereo on. He pulls you up and drags you off the bed. “Come on girl, jumping jacks, let’s go.” He starts doing jumping jacks, staring at you expectantly the entire time. You give another overdramatic sigh, but you join him, because you know he won’t stop bugging you until you do.

You try to follow Dirk’s silly little exercise routine for most of the first song. When he starts doing pushups, you just go back to doing jumping jacks. You’re good at the jumping jacks. Not so much at the pushups.

Half a minute into the second song, you recognize it as a Britney Spears remix and start laughing at him. The exercise session quickly turns into an impromptu dance party. He doesn’t seem offended. Rather, he starts singing and making dumb facial expressions with you. He really just seems glad that you’re being active as he suggested. You feel a little bad for forcing him into this at first, but as the playlist goes on and he viciously commands you to “stop your staring at my HEY” you can’t stop laughing for almost a solid minute. You don’t feel happy exactly, but the upbeat pop music isn’t the best soundtrack for suicidal thoughts.

The playlist is nearly an hour long, and you’re sweaty and exhausted by the end of it. You collapse on his bed again. This time Dirk collapses next to you. You’re both out of breath, but he doesn’t take as much time to get his back.

In the silence, it’s harder to pretend that you feel legitimately happy. But he was right; you do feel a lot better. Even though you know this is temporary, and you may or may not feel like absolute shit in the morning, you decide to curl up with Dirk for now. He’s right about a lot of things. Maybe he’s right about fighting the urge to kill yourself.

Maybe you should trust him. As he locks his arms around you again, you start to believe he can protect you.

**Author's Note:**

> The "stop your staring at my hey" line was a reference to the song Take A Hint, from Victorious.


End file.
